Hello and welcome to my blog tour stop for Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s newest book, Dust Child! I was supposed to write a post about the progress I’ve been making on this story. Instead, here I am, writing a full review because of how invested I was in it. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai does it again with this book, infusing it with a gentle understanding and compassion that makes me such a huge fan of her writing. I read Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s debut novel The Mountains Sing in December 2022 and it marched its way onto my favorites of the year list. That (and more) made the author an instant favorite, propelling Dust Child into my most anticipated book releases of 2023 list.
Category Archives: Booklists
The Daughters of Madurai by Rajasree Variyar | Book Review
There are some books, very rare, that grab at an issue and twist it until it’s nothing but a bunch of bare threads. Everything that constitutes it is out in the open – circumstances, decisions, relationships, reasons, strengths, weaknesses, heartbreaks – all of it. For us women, especially, each of these threads are as important as the other, because we simply cannot afford to be shortsighted. And yet, push us far enough and we will harness all our strength and push back so hard, you’ll find yourself questioning your reality. Putting all of this – a complex web of feelings and thoughts and decisions – into one book is a feat in itself. And Rajasree Variyar does it in fabulously in The Daughters of Madurai.
DramaQueenAThon Announcement – International Women’s Day 2023 | March 2023 Tentative TBR
Every time International Women’s Day rolls around, the question that many misogynists (most of these men) ask: “Why is there a special day for women? Where is the special day for men? Is this your idea of feminism?” This is so tone deaf and ignorant on so many levels that it becomes something that we are left with no choice but to ignore. Instead, we focus on celebrating women and feminism, to bring to the front all the women inspiring us in a million different best ways and more. And what can us bookworms, who are on social media, who have a pinch of a following do? Hold readathons in celebration! Which is why this year, DramaQueenAThon – the original edition – has made a comeback.
The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai | Book Review
Historical fiction is a difficult genre to write in, especially because the times are so far back in the past that you have to be extremely careful with your research. You can’t disrespect the past while you write your story, and you have to get things exactly right. But when authors do get it right, they manage to blow you away in more ways than one and in ways you’ll often not see coming. Among this population of authors is Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, who, after seven years of research, published the book The Mountains Sing, a story set before and during the Việt Nam war. I became an instant fan of her when I finally read it in December 2022. And not just because of the book.
2022 Reading Recap | Favorite Books, Books I DNFed, and Least Favorite Books!
I don’t want to start off yet another blog post with how shitty 2022 started off, although by mentioning this, I’ve actually done what I said I wouldn’t. But it’s a big reason why my reading saw so many crests and troughs throughout the year, so it’s unavoidable, really. I’ve already spoke about how blogging went for me in 2022 (here in this blog post). Today, I’ll talk about how my reading went. I’ve been writing this blog post for what feels like decades and only now am I getting to upload it. But better late than never, right?
Recent Reads – December 2022 Edition | October & November 2022 Reading Wrap Up
If I were a little more organized, I would have made sure to have updated my October 2022 wrap up here on the blog like I did on my YouTube channel. (You can watch it here.) To be fair to myself, though, I’d just gotten off a heavy month of blogging and I guess my blogging spirit had burned out. However, the mere memory of the rush of Blogtober and the fact that I got through it, that I succeeded in posting on every day of October, puts a wide grin on my face. I had never expected that I would be able to put up 31 consecutive blog posts (33, if you include the intro and the wrap up) and to have done it has made me super happy.
So the tiredness told me that I had earned a leave of absence from here and helped me decide to combine my October 2022 wrap up with my November 2022 wrap up. I have done combined wrap ups before, so this isn’t some out of the box thing. The downside (or upside, depends on how you see it) is that there are 16 books that I need to be talking about in this blog post – 5 from October, and 11 from November. How did I end up here? We all know the answer to that! 😂
Books That Made Me Cry | Some Book Recommendations | #Blogtober22 – Day 30
In today’s blog post, I’ll be taking you through 10 books (more, actually) that I cried my eyes out reading and have shouted from the rooftops about how great they were. That’s a measure of how good a book is, I think, of how much it affects the reader. And these books stand out among my read pile because of how much pain, how much emotion I felt as I read them. There were originally 15 books on this list (in the video I made), but I’ve cut this list down to 10, to the books that affected me the most.
Readathons & Reading Challenges | #Blogtober22 – Day 29
A few days ago, I wrote a blog post talking about TBRs and whether or not you should make them. Today, I’ll be talking about readathons and reading challenges. I won’t be talking about why you should be doing these. Instead, I’m listing down the pros and cons of joining readathons and reading challenges. Based on this, you can decide whether or not you want to get involved in them. But before I start, I need to make it clear that irrespective of what the pros are, if reading is stressing you out, it’s always better to take time out and become kinder to yourself.
10 Books by Queer Authors I’ve Loved | Book Recommendations | #Blogtober22 – Day 28
June is Pride Month, a celebration of queerness and our LGBTQIA+ fellows. We have loads of posts on social media celebrating the same, as it should be. But many-a-times, we tend to forget that we shouldn’t be sharing these stories and reading these books only in that month. We need to do it around theContinue reading “10 Books by Queer Authors I’ve Loved | Book Recommendations | #Blogtober22 – Day 28”
Difference Between a Bad Character and a Badly Written Character | #Blogtober22 – Day 27
A couple of months ago, out of the blue, I got thinking about a character and how I didn’t like them at all. There were, however, reasons which people pointed out saying that the character was supposed to make you feel those things and that that is how the author wrote it. So, this means that there are bad characters and badly written characters and there’s a stark difference between the two. Either way, however, you tend to dislike both types of characters – one, because they’re supposed to be reprehensible, and the second, because of how they’re written.
The Melodramatic Bookworm 